We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
from Part II - Scientific Naturalism
Introduction
Evolutionary naturalism has been traditionally identified with empiricism and materialism, in opposition to the metaphysical speculations of the movement's theological antagonists. Typical in this regard was the definition of the movement given by James Ward in his Gifford Lectures, which was cited by Frank Turner in Between Religion and Science:
The naturalistic philosophy consists in the union of three fundamental theories: (1) the theory that nature is ultimately resolvable into a single vast mechanism; (2) the theory of evolution as the working of that mechanism; and (3) the theory of psychophysical parallelism or conscious automatism, according to which theory mental phenomena occasionally accompany but never determine the movements and interactions of the material world.
As Turner stressed in his gloss on this definition, scientific (or evolutionary) naturalism repudiated supernaturalism and constructed its interpretation of man, nature and society from the theories, methods and categories of empirical science rather than from rational analysis. In temperament it was secular; in philosophy, empiricist. It held that the scientific method was the only means of acquiring true knowledge, and this method in turn gave support to three theories which were eagerly embraced by the scientific naturalists: Dalton's theory of the atom, the law of the conservation of energy, and the Darwinian theory of evolution.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
